25 August 2013 12:01 AM

Hash made Dame Sally hallucinate - and she still can't see straight

Ever since poor old Ann Widdecombe tried to tighten the dope laws rather mildly a dozen years ago, lofty Establishment figures have taken to confessing that they took drugs at university.

Half of William Hague’s Shadow Cabinet did so, in what looked like a well organised scheme to destroy Miss Widdecombe’s plan.These confessions are rarely coupled with any expressions of shame. They ignore the growing correlation between cannabis use and incurable mental illness, and the thousands of quiet personal tragedies that have resulted, and will result, from this.

Any intelligent person must surely see what the effect will be when a prominent figure reveals such a past crime and does not condemn it.It will weaken the enforcement of the anti-cannabis law (already feeble), and fuel the potent and well-funded international campaign to make this frightening poison legal.So what should we make of the behaviour of Professor Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer of England?

She went on to BBC Radio 3 (so civilised!) to discuss her taste in music.In the course of this, Dame Sally admitted she was shy of giving interviews. Yet it was clear from the conversation that Michael Berkeley, the presenter of the programme Private Passions, knew she was going to talk about drugs. In fact, about halfway through the discussion, he made it clear that the subject would come up later.

Is it possible that this had actually been negotiated? Who can say? Dame Sally, a member of the 1960s campus radical generation, also revealed that she had been ‘very lively’ in student politics. Tell us more, Dame Sally. And then it came – the confession that Dame Sally, a virtuous non-smoker of tobacco, had guzzled a number of hash cookies, until, rightly alarmed by hallucinations, she ceased.

What conclusions did she draw from this? That drugs are a medical problem rather than a legal one, together with some excuse-making guff about ‘addiction’, something for which there is no scientific evidence at all.

This just happens to chime with the line being taken by every lobbyist for weakening what’s left of our laws against drugs, especially the unpleasant alleged comedian Russell Brand.This is the sort of company the opera-going, fine-wine-loving, smoke-free Dame Sally is keeping (though she says she is careful not to be photographed holding a glass of wine, lest she sets a bad example).

She did accidentally manage to say one genuinely moving and powerful thing, quoting her late father, an ordained minister of the Church and Professor of Theology at Birmingham University for 26 years, who warned her: ‘Drugs decivilise you. You stop being a civilised person.’

They also decivilise those societies that allow them to spread, as we see every day.If people like Dame Sally won’t stand up for civilisation, who will?

Now Labour has joined the Lord Sutch looniesPoliticians are such cowards and fashion victims that no major figure will dare oppose Labour’s plan for votes at 16. It means, among other things, 16-year-olds on juries, and if that doesn’t alarm you, then I can’t help you. The Liberal Democrats, now in government, have backed this lunacy for years.

I suppose we had better comb through the 1960s manifestos of the late Screaming Lord Sutch and see what other stupid, laughable schemes we find there. They too will probably come true before these islands finally sink, doped and giggling, into the sea. Sutch, whose National Teenage Party first proposed this plan 50 years ago, at least knew that the idea was barking mad, and dressed accordingly. Now it is the serious policy of the suited political class.

Since our economic, defence, foreign, education, immigration and criminal justice policies are already so infantile, and more or less based on mass bribery, it won’t make all that much difference if we just skip a generation and bring in votes at five. Just offer them lollipops instead of welfare entitlements.

Stop talking rubbish, Mr PicklesI have a soft spot for Eric Pickles, a man who once complained to me that months of hard dieting had only succeeded in making his feet less fat. But I think he should stop helping David Cameron to pretend to be a conservative.

Here’s an opportunity. Mr Pickles is far too bright not to have known that the abolition of the traditional weekly rubbish collection was forced on this country by EU directives. Yet he pretended he could reverse this.

Now the truth is out, though the announcement was left to the obscure Lord de Mauley (who sounds like a character from the old Billy Bunter stories) in the middle of August. We have no choice.

Mr Pickles should confess all, and tell the truth to this autumn’s Tory conference.He should say – which is true – that a country that cannot even decide when its dustbins are emptied is not independent, and that the only honest positions anyone can take about the EU are ‘leave now’ or ‘stay for ever’.

The REAL reason Ed's under fireThose who think that things get into the media by accident, and dismiss all other explanations as ‘conspiracy theories’, surely need to ask why the past few months have seen so many press and broadcasting attacks on the Labour leader, Ed Miliband.Some parish councillor mutters that Mr Miliband isn’t doing well, and it leads the bulletins. Or an entire opinion poll is expensively commissioned, in which people are invited to say Mr Miliband is no good. Opinion polls, as I point out from time to time, are devices for influencing opinion, not for measuring it.

Even odder, why has this attack – which benefits nobody but David Cameron – come largely from the sort of people and organs who used to lick the boots of Anthony Blair?Simple. Mr Cameron really is the Heir to Blair. By adopting Mr Blair’s policies wholesale, he has won their admiration and support.When Mr Cameron (who is also no good) finally flops too badly to go on, these people will all switch back to Labour.

I see that scientists have found out what snails do in the dark by attaching tiny lights to them. Apparently they like to slither along each other’s slime trails. A pity a similar research project cannot be applied to the dozens of publicly funded political spin doctors or ‘special advisers’ who tell the media what to think about the great issues of the day.

As a footnote to the Sally Davies affair, I must just mention that, while high-handedly rejecting a complaint from me about (another) blatantly pro-drug legalisation item on BBC radio, a Corporation official said to me that the requirement to be impartial didn’t apply, as the reform of the drug laws is not an ‘active controversy’ in Britain just now. You could have fooled me.

The argument that you quote about drugs "They also decivilise those societies that allow them to spread, as we see every day." is summed up as the nonsense that it is by the fact that drug use is actually FALLING at the moment.

The reason for this is simple. Nothing to do with the law but everything to do with money. Currently we are in the middle of a credit crunch/recession where people have less money. Less money means less money to spend on drugs, QED, less drugs.

Before you start propaganding the myth that the BBC is quietly pro-drugs and that it is un-conservative to support drug legalisation and produce the following anti-drug quote "They also decivilise those societies that allow them to spread, as we see every day" the following deserves to be pointed out; before 1916 drugs such as cocaine and opium were perfectly legal, and were only banned over fears that use of such substances would damage the morale of troops fighting on the Western Front. In other words, drugs were legal and successive Conservative government upheld people's right to use them. Indeed, in the 19th century at the peak of empire senior figures in British public life were regualr drug users. Clive of India, William Wilberforce and Florence Nightingale were regular opium users, the former dying of an overdose from it. The Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone laced his tea with laudanum, and in fiction Sherlock Holmes is depicted as a regualr cocaine user at the beginning of the story 'A Sign of the Four.'

If the BBC were a truly pro-drug organisation that wished to stiffle debate it would not let on panel shows discussing them (is it me or is there rarely a drug debate on the BBC were either you or Melanie Phillips are on?). It would reveal that statistics that you quoted for the chapter on prison in your book 'The Abolition of Liberty' showed that the rate of prison population in the early years of the 20th century was actually smaller than it is today; this inspite of the fact that drugs were legal.

Paul P, the problem doesn’t lie with the ‘capitalist’, leave him alone! He’s just an ‘individual’ like you or me - or should be. But therein lies the problem. Today, capitalism is dominated by big-business - or more accurately by global corporations and their tax-‘havenry’ (excuse my Charlotte Vere symantics); also by the type of crony-capitalism we now have where an increasing concentration of political and business-elite power is truly terrifying (or it should be). The real economy has become but a mere proxy for the stock-market and the banking system and the accumulation of wealth, aided by our skewered financial system, has become the prime objective.

A proper functioning free market capitalist system favours the entrepreneur at the expense of the incumbent. Such a system fosters innovation, increases productivity and produces real wealth generation in the real economy.

I do agree with you when you allude to ‘free-roaming capitalism’ being the problem here (i.e. global capitalism). But the debate should have already started as to what regulations are required and which taxes are needed in order to re-define our capitalist economy along fair and sustainable lines…. If we really are in that ‘post-emancipation period’, as you term it, perhaps we need another preacher-man to arrive and inform us of their ‘Dream’....then again, perhaps the time for debate and for dreams has long gone. It does increasingly seem to me that ‘democracy’, or at least our current crop of political ‘leaders’ are simply not up to the job of making the sort of momentous decisions required of them, never mind implementing the difficult changes needed.

"Those arguing that sixteen and seventeen-year-olds should be denied the vote because they lack the required knowledge and capacity for reasoned judgement apparently assume that this is not also true of the majority of the electorate."

Good point. Most people in consumerland have their tastes and opinions decided for them by television and the tabloids. Billions are not poured into advertising because it doesn't work. Likewise the government doesn't allocate lottery-win size budgets to PR and spin because they are ineffective. Sales of the tabloids don't handsomely exceed those of the broadsheets because the discerning public discards the pot-stirring sensationalism of the comic sheets with intellectual contempt.

My principal concern about extending the voting age to sixteen and seventeen-year olds is that the social engineering agenda of state school education (for want of a better word) will still predominate in their naïve and impressionable minds at that stage. The left will therefore tend to benefit disproportionately. Not until Murdoch's comics begin to reverse that trend in so-called adulthood will some sort of balance be restored.

In the event, though, the point is moot. Extending the voting age to five year-olds would not change the modern pattern of British politics. Politics in Britain, as Michael Portillo has observed, is more or less dead. We are presently in that post-emancipation period of quasi-calm with credit still funding illusory prosperity, while the remnants of the moneyed-class regroup and begin the process of reacquiring all the wealth.

Give it another twenty years and we'll be back where we were mid-20th century. I don't think a billion-odd Chinese will come online (significant disposable income) fast enough to prevent British wages crashing through the poverty floor. You know how it is with free-roaming capitalism - it always seeks the max profit at the lowest cost. You are talking about *our" capitalists?, you ask. Are they not on "our* side? Goodness me no. Whatever can you be thinking.

Furthermore, to look at it in the reverse - I would say that man's physical peak is in his 20s, undoubtedly. However, some former athletes in their 50s may well be fitter/stronger than some 20 year-olds, because they started from a higher base-point. Generalisation is really all one is able to do .

Joshua Wooderson, tax obligations are levied on all, regardless of age. So even Daniel Radcliff, aka Harry Potter, had to pay income tax on the reported £100K fee he received for his first starring role - even though he was only twelve at the time. Politicians like to raise the ‘principle’ of ‘no taxation without representation’, but 18 does seem about right, particularly as ‘kidulthood’ these days appears to extend anywhere from 14-years to 24-years.

The comments you make about BBC’s QT are of course correct. In fact, the only enjoyment these days to be had from ‘monitoring’ that program is the feeling of intellectual/moral superiority after having to listen to the highly massaged double-speak answers given from the usual assortment of invited politicians/pundits/comedians/business people. Then again, when the (very) angry David Starkey is on, the programme turns into a different beast entirely!

If the human brain is not fully developed until the mid 20s, that suggests there's a stronger case for raising the voting age to 21 (as it was in the '60s) than for lowering it to 16. Brain function in the elderly is not as easy to categorise as teenage development; loss of congnitive function can to some extent be compensated for by experience. One cannot ignore the science in making moral and political judgments.

Those arguing that sixteen and seventeen-year-olds should be denied the vote because they lack the required knowledge and capacity for reasoned judgement apparently assume that this is not also true of the majority of the electorate. Alas, one need only watch an episode of Question Time, with its usual barrage of banal and staggeringly ill-informed comments from the audience (not that the panellists are much better) to be disabused of this belief. Of course, given the negligible impact that any one vote has on public policy, ignorance of politics is not entirely unreasonable.

In principle, I am inclined to support extending the vote to them, if only because it seems to me unfair that anyone should be obliged to pay tax and yet have no say (however symbolic) in how that money is spent. In practice, the prospect of a more secure Labour majority (and the addition of up to a million or so new voters would not be insignificant in terms of deciding the electoral outcome) is not one I particularly welcome.

Sorry I think you were replying to my comment, not John's (don't want to get John into trouble) Your reluctance to accept the shortcomings of extreme youth is understandable being a father etc but, with a bit of respect, it isn't that helpful.

I think one of the areas you may be struggling with is inferring from the particular to the general - ie, because I've met such-and-such a person who does such-and-such, we can draw general conclusions about all such people. In other words, there are exceptions to the rule, but that's all they are.

Obviously, these are not areas of science, which can be easily substantiated with physical proof (although progress is being made continually in this area), but rather observations based on ones own experience. You cannot prove that teenagers aren't immature just as I can't prove that they are, if for no other reason than defining immaturity itself is fraught with difficulty.

We have all been through the ageing process and remember the mistakes we made when young, and the naive grasp we had of human affairs (and I say this not as an old person, but definitely over 30). To decree that wisdom isn't accumulated is to deny man's capacity for learning. Additionally, everyone develops within their own limits, which accounts for the fact that some mature adults seem to know less - they were starting from a lower base point, but probably know more than when they were 20 (but less than some 20 year-olds). Incidentally, the low capacity /gullibility of some adults (voting for Cameron etc) is precisely why I believe in some form of "voting licence".

You seem to have a reluctance to acknowledge that all animal life takes the shape of an arc and that there are qualities associated with each stage - one starts off vulnerable, reaches a peak of performance, power and strength, then slowly declines. Given that we on average live about 80 years, the peak of operation, mentally, is probably sometime in middle age.

I am reminded of the 60s generation call " not to trust anyone over 30". And why did they say that? Might it have been because they wanted to rip up the social fabric and they knew that younger kids would be more easily indoctrinated? Think of all the kids who volunteered for action during the Great War.

I'm also reminded of Children of the Corn, oh, and 1984. In fact, when one thinks about the almost neo-Pagan cult of Consumerism we are in the grip of and the image of eternal youth/celebrity which it feeds upon, one wonders if they weren't too far from the truth.

What would be the political arithmetic of introducing 16-year-old voters? If the Scottish referendum result is a ‘yes’ vote, then the loss of Labour MP’s north of the border being returned to Westminster will need to be made up somehow I suppose. So, mostly a Status-Quo situation, apart from maybe some extra mileage for Lib-Dem type ideas.

The real danger is that in terms of policy, it would have the effect of ‘sidelining’ recent support for the so-called right-wing parties - and so allow the big-three parties to continue their statist EU agendas. That’s the danger. So a lot hangs on next year’s EU elections. If there is a massive turnout for UKIP, this could manifest in a real tipping point. Much then would depend on the media, newspapers/Rupert Murdoch and the BBC. Perhaps we will find some media types ‘banned’ (contracts not renewed) from the BBC if they are deemed as being non-pc (like David Bellamy was over global warming, well according to him he was, or was it jus t a case of ‘beardism’).

John of Dorset, first you reveal your abode (Australia). Now you ‘give away’ your age. I suppose I will have to be prepared to replace my former slippered (of the M&S type) and cloistered image I once held - of a wise old sage, if you will - with a replacement one, of say - wily young surfer, oh, and sage also of course (but then i am biased, as your distributist views do chime with my own)…. Though too be honest, I’m not completely sure I can fully digest your personal factoids - are they, I wonder, just a clever displacement tactic? I notice for instance, that Alan Thomas couldn’t resist returning to the table and salivating over the recent morsels you have chosen to serve-up!

Whilst athe brain development argument has a degree of credibility it is my understanding that the front cortex of the brain which theorists see as being responsible for self regulation and risk aversion in humans does not fully mature until age twenty five by that rationale you would exclude 18-24 year olds and the majority of retired people from voting. Likewise most neuroscientists believe that brain systems responsible for logical reasoning (all one would need to vote) mature at sixteen but deterioate at age 70 onwards so should we deny the majority of the elderly the vote based on this rationale? I don't think so.

Age boundaries are drawn for moral and political reasons not scientific ones otherwise we would have a society where teenagers can drive before they can watch an 18 certificate film or joined the armed forces before they can order a pint in their local pub.

"This just happens to chime with the line being taken by every lobbyist for weakening what’s left of our laws against drugs"

I wouldnt worry about it, a friend of mine was just arrested for dealing cannabis, he is a family man, only deals to about 5 people, all in their 30s and 40s, does it just to fund his own use. He never had anymore than about 2 ounces in his possession. The police just raided him, found just under 2 ounces, a relatively tiny amount, yet have just convicted him for half a kilo, presumably to ensure they get a result and he goes to jail. So worry not Peter, the Police are still regularly making sure those selling a harmless drug even in tiny amounts, end up in jail by adding substantially to the evidence.

Once the votes for 16-year-olds notion gains a little momentum, expect to see vociferous support from the news media and wider corporate world, couched in terms of "human rights".
The rights to payday loans, usurious credit and phone contracts and gambling access are, of course, implied by the right to vote.

Here’s an extract from a 2003 article in Guardian when the issue of votes at 16 was raised by – I think – Lord Charlie Faulkner. The article was written by R Elisabeth Cornwell, from the school of psychology, University of St Andrews and Richard Dawkins. Yes, that Dawkins.

“Neuroscientists such as Jay Geidd, of the US National Institutes of Health, have shown that the brain undergoes major reconstruction from the onset of puberty which continues until 20 or beyond: especially the frontal lobes or prefrontal cortex, the very bit that enables us to think in the abstract, weigh moral dilemmas and control our impulses. It's been called the part of the brain that makes us human. Frontal lobe damage causes severe personality changes and sudden emotional outbursts. Patients often can't control inappropriate or antisocial behaviour, can't plan for the future, or see the consequences of their behaviour. Do these symptoms sound familiar?
In The Primal Teen, Barbara Straught makes the strong case that adolescent brains are far from adult brains. Teenagers may look like adults, but the MRI scanner sees profound differences. The psychologist Peter Jensen notes that teenagers frequently make poor decisions that seem completely obvious to adults. Parents might be relieved that this is all part of normal development, but it doesn't buttress the case for lowering the voting age.
As Geidd says, "[It's] not that the teens are stupid or incapable... It's sort of unfair to expect them to have adult levels of organisational skills or decision-making before their brain is finished being built." In Jensen's words, "[Parents] have to function like a surrogate set of frontal lobes." The child psychologist Charles Nelson of the University of Minnesota says much the same thing, after explaining the erratic and moody teenage behaviour which bedevils even the most adoring parents: "[Adolescents] are capable of very strong emotions and very strong passions, but their prefrontal cortex hasn't caught up with them yet. It's as though they don't have the brakes that allow them to slow those emotions down."

Actually I have four daughters three of whom are teenagers and also have done voluntary mentoring work with young people who have been in trouble with police as well as a youth drama group so yes I do have ample experience with teenagers especially the kind of working class youth Daily Mail readers of a certain kind stereotype, dehumanize and demoralise. You obviously have met very few over thirty year olds if you feel it requires reasoned judgement to vote Cameron into power.Just saying.

@ William
so as a tattooed person over forty I would qualify to vote still .I thank thee. But surely not allowing folks with tattoo's the vote is discriminatory, because of the colour of their skin .Or at least those parts tattooed.
In fact I'd suggest only those with tattoo's clearly visible when fully clothed should get an extra vote. But only if one piece ,clearly shows the cross of St George. And also all serving in our armed services.
Those that were shop keepers should be denied a vote all together. A certain retail tycoon ( retired ) comes to mind.

Jerry-
Thank you for your criticism. I will try and take your advice on board. I know nobody likes a rambler, and I know I do tend to ramble on a bit. If I could venture to offer some advice of my own it would be this. Accept others may take umbrage with comments in which you refer to people as grotesque. Either choose to defend your comments(which you did) or retract, or rephrase. Even if your words are only mildly disparaging, they can still provoke unintended argument by virtue of the fact that they are disparaging. I promise I'll stop bothering you now- It wasn't my intention to do so!

Why shouldn't there be a maximum age for voting as well? Currently, seventy is the cut-off age for jury service (to be increased to 75) and as the ability to deprive another of their liberty is as important as voting for an MP or councillor it is logical for the franchise to be removed from the over 75s.

Wisdom on politics on any other matter does not increase exponentially with age however pessimism, apathy and conservatism like hemorrhoids, myopia and alopecia do. So John I fear you will be greatly disappointed if you think knowledge, wisdom and understanding

I must admit, I am left wondering whether you have ever actually encountered a teenager? (Of course, our own offspring are always unusually perfect I find)

You Sir are profoundly wrong. Of course, there are qualifies associated with each stage in life. The young may well be bounding with joy, energy, optimism, enthusiasm for life etc, but, unfortunately, they do rather have a tendency to re-invent the wheel. They're not too good (generally) in the reasoned judgement stakes either. Perhaps this is because they've had no life experience and haven't had time to learn? I'm just saying ...

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